Hindawi Publishing Corporation Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine Volume 2014, Article ID 741712, 28 pages http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2014/741712 Research Article Are Famine Food Plants Also Ethnomedicinal Plants? An Ethnomedicinal Appraisal of Famine Food Plants of Two Districts of Bangladesh Fardous Mohammad Safiul Azam, Anup Biswas, Abdul Mannan, Nusrat Anik Afsana, Rownak Jahan, and Mohammed Rahmatullah Department of Biotechnology & Genetic Engineering, Faculty of Life Sciences, University of Development Alternative, House No. 78, Road No. 11A (new), Dhanmondi, Dhaka 1209, Bangladesh Correspondence should be addressed to Mohammed Rahmatullah; [email protected] Received 27 November 2013; Revised 30 December 2013; Accepted 6 January 2014; Published 20 February 2014 Academic Editor: Menaka C. Thounaojam Copyright © 2014 Fardous Mohammad Safiul Azam et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Plants have served as sources of food and medicines for human beings since their advent. During famines or conditions of food scarcity, people throughout the world depend on unconventional plant items to satiate their hunger and meet their nutritional needs. Malnourished people often suffer from various diseases, much more than people eating a balanced diet. We are hypothesizing that the unconventional food plants that people eat during times of scarcity of their normal diet are also medicinal plants and thus can play a role in satiating hunger, meeting nutritional needs, and serving therapeutic purposes. Towards testing our hypothesis, surveys were carried out among the low income people of four villages in Lalmonirhat and Nilphamari districts of Bangladesh. People and particularly the low income people of these two districts suffer each year from a seasonal famine known as Monga. Over 200 informants from 167 households in the villages were interviewed with the help of a semistructured questionnaire and the guided field-walk method. The informants mentioned a total of 34 plant species that they consumed during Monga. Published literature shows that all the species consumed had ethnomedicinal uses. It is concluded that famine food plants also serve as ethnomedicinal plants. 1. Introduction this dependency increases during drought conditions [5]. However, scarcity of food or in practicality, famine condition, Human beings need food for survival and to satiate their is also a common occurrence with people who live in poverty hunger. Plants have always constituted a major food source and so cannot afford their daily requirements of a normal for people throughout the world since the advent of humans. and conventional diet. Such food scarcity/famine (famine During times of natural disasters like inclement weather and food scarcity have been considered equivalent in this conditions, populations suffering from severe food shortages paper in the sense that both conditions lead to inadequate become heavily reliant on wild food plants for survival [1]. intake of daily conventional food items) can be observed Thishasgivenrisetotheconceptoffamineplants[2]. Rodale among the people of Bangladesh, about a third of those who and Mcgrath [3]statedthatfamineplantshavebeeneatenand livebelowthepovertylevelincome,definedaslessthan utilized for centuries. Certain “wild-foods” are enjoyed and US$ 1 per day. Moreover, people of the northern districts therefore collected and consumed every time when ready and ofBangladesharesubjectedeachyeartoaseasonalfamine these are important “famine-foods” during periods of food knownasMonga.Mongausuallyoccurstwiceayear;the shortage [4]. greater Monga (boro Monga) occurs during the lean season The human population of the western Sahel has been preceding the harvest of paddy in the Bangla months of reported to depend on a number of wild plant foods, and Ashwin and Kartik (mid-September to mid-November), and 2 Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine the smaller Monga (choto Monga) occurs during the lean from their West African research that many wild plants season preceding the harvest of paddy in between the Bangla were used both in therapeutics and for dietary purposes. We months of Chaitra and Jaistha (mid-March to mid-June). It further hypothesize that through trial and error, the human is to be noted that rice (obtained after dehusking paddy) is population have selected famine food plants items, which the staple cereal of the people of Bangladesh and is the major not only fulfill hunger satiating and nutritional needs, but item consumed by the poorer rural people with lentils and also serves a therapeutic purpose. It then follows from our an occasional sidedish of a vegetable. Monga occurs due to hypothesis that famine food plants, in general, must also have a number of factors, lack of adequate water supply during ethnomedicinal uses. theabovemonthsandlackofdiversificationofjobs(most Theobjectiveofthepresentsurveywastoconductan people being agricultural laborers with little cultivable land ethnomedicinal appraisal of famine food plants consumed by of their own). The agricultural laborers, landless farmers, and poor villagers in four villages (Sailmari, Khurdobichondoi, the marginal farmers suffer from acute food shortage during Paschim Dewwabar, and Schatunama) of two adjoining Monga [6]. districts, namely, Lalmonirhat and Nilphamari, which are two Lalmonirhat and Nilphamari districts are two districts in of the most Monga-prone districts in Bangladesh, and have the northern part of Bangladesh, which suffer from Monga. substantial segments of the population suffering from food The people in these districts, particularly the rural poor, scarcity during Monga. The two districts are bordered on the are the worst sufferers and suffer during Monga from acute south by Rangpur district, on the north by West Bengal State food shortages. We have previously shown that a number of India, on the east by Kurigram district, and on the west of nonconventional plant items are consumed by the poor by Dinajpur and Panchagarh districts (Figure 1). The area of people of the northern districts of Bangladesh during Monga the four villages where the present survey was carried out [7]. In fact, such consumption of nonconventional plant items approximates 50 square kilometers. An indigenous commu- duringtimesoffoodscarcityhasbeenreportedbyusfor nity, namely the Santals, inhabits portions of the two districts other districts of Bangladesh, like Rangamati and Kurigram covered. The Santals are considered to be original settlers [8, 9]; Rangamati district does not suffer from Monga, but in this area since prehistoric times; however, the majority food scarcity exists among segments of the mainstream of the population (over 98%) of the two districts at present population as well as tribal people. Also notably, Rangamati comprises of mainstream Bengali-speaking population. district is in the southeastern portion of the country. During The villages surveyed lacked any industry; as a con- our survey in Kurigram district on famine food plants, we sequence, the people are dependent on agriculture. Three noted a distinct correlation between nonconventional plants of the villages Sailmari, Khurdobichondoi, and Paschim consumed during food scarcity and their folk medicinal Dewwabar fell under Kaliganj and Hatibandha Upazilas usage;inotherwords,mostoftheplantsconsumedhadfolk (subdistricts) of Lalmonirhat district, while Schatunuma fell medicinal uses [10]. under Dimla Upazila of Nilphamari district (Figure 1). As per Chronic lack of food causes the people to suffer from National Information Services provided by the Government malnutrition with consequent wasting away of body and of Bangladesh [19], the total population of Kaliganj and weakening of the body’s immune systems [11]. This can cause Hatibanda Upazilas was 216,868 and 239,568, respectively a number of diseases to occur because of the body’s weak with a literacy rate of 24, and 21.4% (it is to be noted that defenses against invading pathogens. Lack of proper diet can a person is considered literate in Bangladesh if the person not only cause shortage of macronutrients like carbohydrates, can only sign his or her name without even going to primary proteins, and lipids, but also cause lack of vitamins and school). The total population of Dimla Upazila is 280,076 essential micronutrients with concomitant arising of ailments with an average literacy level of 42.86%. Small farmers (i.e. like anemia, night blindness, beriberi, pellagra, kwashiorkor, farmers without land or having less than one-third acre of and marasmus, to name only a few. Thus nonconventional land per family) constituted over 80% of the population fooditemsshouldnotonlybeedible,butalsosatiatethe in the villages surveyed; these farmers mostly worked as hunger and meet the body’s nutritional needs adequately. agricultural laborers in other people’s land. The Australian Aboriginal hunter-gatherers reportedly The surveyed villages did not have any forest land. The used to have over 800 plant foods, and that this traditional villages, however, contained fallow land and “char” (river diet may have been low in carbohydrates but high in fiber, islands on the Teesta River) areas. There was some vegetative leading to protection of the Aborigines from a genetic pre- cover in the fallow lands and chars; the vegetation mostly disposition